THERE ARE FEW PLACES TO LIVE ABOARD...BUT HAS ANYONE EVER THOUGHT OF CREATING A FLOATING MARINA WITH A SURGE FENCE TO CALM THE WAVE ACTION 3 MILES OFF SHORE?

OK so it's a la Waterworld.... but if you drilling platforms do it...why not have live aboard platforms with ferryservice to a port for shopping? It could be protected from bad weather. It could be easily accessible... it could be open to NON-PUMPOUT people. It could be a TOWN!..... The problem is depth and ground tackle. BUT if you had enough people...it could work financially...especially with fast ferryservice.... and think of the fresh air and clean water...

As an engineering problem it is solvable, but economically there's no way. Figure a semi-submersible oil platform has something like $100,000 a day cost. But this is assuming work crew conditions, minimal food, no entertainment, basically it's a work site at sea (though a comfortable one). To turn a semi-submersible into a luxury retirement community would probably wind up costing $2-400,000 a day.

The conversions above are shallow water rigs that basically were converted to hotels on the water. Which is far cheaper than a mid-ocean floating platform.

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Greg

- If animals weren't meant to be eaten then they wouldn't be made of food.

Gary... I don't buy it for even a second... if that rig is touching the sea floor... you have land to attach to... if it is abandoned and there is no one there... it is ZERO DOLLARS per day! This isn't rocket science... there will be 100's of abandoned oil rigs in the future just in the Gulf of Mexico. I had a friend who passed away who operated a standup oil rig supply vessel. He would just drop the stilts raise the vessel and become a stilt home in the ocean besides supplying the oil rig.... there are ways....

Salmon cage or floating herring weir-lots around here.
I guess if you built them square....
They are made of poly pipe & lie on the water like an undulating blanket.
A vessel tied inside one will still move with with the waves but some what dampened.
The fish are fed several times per day using big blowers mounted in Nova Scotia / Maine style 40ft lobster boats,& they have to tie up along the outside of cage. If you placed it in a relatively sheltered cove,it wouldn't be as rough as lying to anchor in same location.
These polyethylene pipe cages have been used for 30 yrs in Maine,Bay of Fundy,Norway,Chile etc.Google Cooke Aquaculture.
Just throwing this in the mix-not saying it's practical to do $$ $wise,but it does definitely work. Cages are now up to 100M (330ft) dia. using 24" poly pipe.

It's not a new idea. "The World" was originally envisioned (IIRC) as a more of a man-made island, a sovereign nation free to travel outside any other nation's territorial waters. In the end it got scaled back to be just another cruise ship that happens to offer condo-like pricing on its cabins.

I remember old magazine articles (Popular Science?) that showed lawns, golf courses, full-service marinas, helipads, etc., all on a floating, movable platform. A more upscale version of the Water World habitation, if you will.

In the end the economics and politics are probably insurmountable.

If you're 3+ NM off the US coast, you're typically in federal waters, which means federal permits. You could do like the Chinese did and stake claim to some shallows somewhere, but it would likely be considered part of some country's territory or exclusionary economic zone.

Floating in unclaimed mid-ocean would mean you'd have to build on a massive scale to withstand storms and waves. Look what happens to oil platforms every time a hurricane blows through.

I'd love to see it happen. I'm thinking you'd need some sort of modular design to allow individual flotation sections to be raised for cleaning, repair and replacement. An interesting engineering problem. If it's big enough to withstand storms, it would have to be either impossibly stiff, or the floating "foundation" would have to flex with the waves without stressing structures above. I can picture a few ways of doing this, but I'm no expert.

The economics might work if it became a sovereign nation and favorable tax haven. Sort of a floating Switzerland, with enough wealthy folks from enough countries, each having a personal stake in its success.

If we continue at the current rate of population growth, it's bound to happen. But that's a big "if". There are a lot of known, and probably more than a few unknown, factors that may constrain that growth at some point.